Butter and Lactose

I got a good two-part question recently. I just have a minute today so I'll answer the quick and easy part now and tackle the other tomorrow.

I have read that there is little to no lactose left in butter, which I don't understand, since churning it creates cream, which I really must avoid.

This one's easy because it's a simple mistake of getting things backward, not hard to do when you're trying to remember something you've "read."

Churning butter does not create cream. Churning cream creates butter. The churning process pumps air into the fat, with the other solids and much of the water falling away. This remainder was the original buttermilk. (The modern buttermilk product is not very similar.)

Butter is about 20% water and 80% fat, with a slight amount of lactose left in the rounding. It really is low lactose and since you don't use very much butter in any particular serving of food can probably be eaten by most people even with lactose intolerance.

Could there be another problem with butter, though? That's what I'll talk about tomorrow.

Cultured Buttermilk Is Low Lactose

Yesterday I warned you about fermented products that weren't cultured and therefore probiotic. Today I'll tell you about one that is.

Buttermilk.

An unsigned article on the Tuscaloosa News website gives the best summary of today's buttermilk I've seen in a long time.

[W]hat the heck is buttermilk?

It’s not what it used to be, that’s for sure. In bygone days, when dairy products were made on small farms, buttermilk was the byproduct of butter making. Great grandma would leave pans of fresh, raw milk in the cool of the cellar for a day or so, waiting for the cream to rise to the top. Then she’d skim off the cream and churn it until the butter formed. The thin, slightly soured liquid left was the original buttermilk. It was prized for baking because, being acidic, it reacted with baking soda to make biscuits, muffins, pancakes and other quick breads rise. Many people also enjoyed it as a beverage.

With the advent of huge commercial dairies, mechanical cream separators and pasteurization, traditional “churn” buttermilk went the way of — well, of fresh, raw milk....

So what’s in those cartons labeled “buttermilk” in your grocery store? Pasteurized milk that’s been cultured with bacteria, just like yogurt. This process yields a product which, unlike traditional buttermilk, is consistent in flavor, texture, nutritional value and cooking properties. Cultured buttermilk is thicker in texture than the watery traditional buttermilk.

What buttermilk doesn’t have in it is butter. Many people assume from the name “buttermilk” that the stuff is quite rich. Not so. Cultured buttermilk is usually made from fat-free milk. I’m no fan of a fat-restricted diet, but if you’re watching your fat, buttermilk is friend, not foe.

Buttermilk also doesn’t have much lactose. Just as in yogurt, the bacteria have digested the lactose, yielding the lactic acid that gives both products their tangy flavor. This means that buttermilk is far easier than sweet milk on the guts of those who are lactose intolerant. It also means that buttermilk is suitable for those of us who watch our carb intake.

...

Cultured buttermilk is great for baking, adding moisture, tenderness and lightness to everything from pancakes to cornbread. Still, once buttermilk is cooked, the cultures are no longer active. How can you use buttermilk without cooking it?

When I was a kid, it wasn’t uncommon for people to simply drink the stuff. I have a book from the 1960s that recommends drinking buttermilk as a delicious and filling pick-me-up. If you’re fond of plain yogurt, try a glass of buttermilk. Or you can run chilled buttermilk through the blender with a handful of fruit and a little sweetener for a healthy fruit smoothie.

David B. Fankhauser, of the University of Cincinnati Clermont College, has a great Making Buttermilk page.

There's even a specialty buttermilk cookbook, Better With Buttermilk: The Secret Ingredient in Old-Fashioned Cooking, by Lee Edwards Benning.

Buttermilk: Cultured and Low-Lactose

The Internet is a strange place. Here it is February 6 and I find an article online, copied from my local paper and dated February 7, that isn't available yet from my local paper.

The article is on buttermilk, the modern version.

Buttermilk used to be a totally different product than the one found on store shelves today. The new buttermilk is cultured with bacteria that work on it somewhat like the ones in yogurt do. They look like this:
Remember, you want them inside you. Really.

And from the article, some basic answers to basic questions.

Question: Why is it called buttermilk?

Answer: True buttermilk is the liquid that is left after cream is churned into butter, explains Marcia Swingle, a "foodways interpreter" at Genesee Country (N.Y.) Village Museum, who demonstrates 19th-century buttermaking at the Mumford museum there.

Q: Does today's cultured buttermilk taste different from sweet cream buttermilk made the traditional way?

A: Yes. Mac McCampbell, chief operating officer at Oatka Milk Products Cooperative Inc., says sweet cream buttermilk is similar to milk but is much richer.

Q: Why can't consumers find old-fashioned sweet cream buttermilk anymore?

A: Consolidation in the dairy industry in the 1950s and 1960s turned old-fashioned buttermilk into the stuff of nostalgia, explains David Brown, a Cornell University food scientist and dairy expert.

Once processing was brought to larger plants at centralized locations, buttermilk's perishability (its shelf life was only a few days) became problematic, Brown says.

Q: How is cultured buttermilk made?

A: Cultured buttermilk starts with pasteurized milk. Then a bacterial culture mix is added to room-temperature milk and allowed to incubate for several hours. Salt is often added for flavor.

Q: What are cultured buttermilk's nutritional qualities?

A: Like regular milk, buttermilk is rich in calcium, vitamins D and A and protein. Some people who are lactose-intolerant might find buttermilk easier to digest than regular milk because some of the lactose has been converted to lactic acid.

A caution, here. Just because buttermilk is cultured doesn't mean that you can gulp it down without thinking. Test smaller quantities first to see if you tolerate it well before going for a glassful.